Biological motion distorts size perception.
Biological motion distorts size perception.
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DOI：
10.1038/srep42576
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发表时间：
2017-02-16
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Troje NF
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Veto P;Einhäuser W;Troje NF
视错觉探索了感觉加工的极限，为研究知觉提供了理想的实验平台。尺寸错觉——尺寸一直被误解的刺激——不仅是由感官线索引起的，也可以由认知因素引起，比如社会地位。在这里，我们调查，是否生态相关性的生物运动也可以扭曲感知大小。我们要求观察者判断点光步行者（plw）的大小，其运动引起人类运动感知的点的配置，以及视觉上匹配的控制刺激（倒置的plw）。我们发现，直立的plw总是被认为比倒置的plw大，而静态点光图则不会产生同样的效果。我们还使用间接范例展示了这种现象：观察者判断倒立PLW后的椎间盘的相对大小大于直立PLW后的椎间盘的相对大小。我们将其解释为一种对比效应：直立的PLW被认为更大，因此随后的椎间盘被认为更小。总之，这些结果表明，生态相关的生物运动刺激比视觉匹配的控制刺激被感知得更大。我们的研究结果提出了一个错觉大小感知的新案例，其中生态重要性导致对大小的扭曲感知。
Visual illusions explore the limits of sensory processing and provide an ideal testbed to study perception. Size illusions – stimuli whose size is consistently misperceived – do not only result from sensory cues, but can also be induced by cognitive factors, such as social status. Here we investigate, whether the ecological relevance of biological motion can also distort perceived size. We asked observers to judge the size of point-light walkers (PLWs), configurations of dots whose movements induce the perception of human movement, and visually matched control stimuli (inverted PLWs). We find that upright PLWs are consistently judged as larger than inverted PLWs, while static point-light figures do not elicit the same effect. We also show the phenomenon using an indirect paradigm: observers judged the relative size of a disc that followed an inverted PLW larger than a disc following an upright PLW. We interpret this as a contrast effect: The upright PLW is perceived larger and thus the subsequent disc is judged smaller. Together, these results demonstrate that ecologically relevant biological-motion stimuli are perceived larger than visually matched control stimuli. Our findings present a novel case of illusory size perception, where ecological importance leads to a distorted perception of size.